Murky prospects

The Abu Sayyaf’s beheading of Marines slain in last week’s Sulu clash replays the 2007 ghastly decapitation of 10 Marines in Basilan. “That’s barbarism,” Commission on Human Rights Loretta Ann Rosales snapped. “It has no place in the 21st century.”

Nor in Islam either. The Muslim’s holy book, Qur’an, prohibits mutilation of dead combatants or torture. The revulsion to the mutilation in Sulu has been universal. President Benigno Aquino III, meanwhile, directed the military to ratchet the pressure.

“A barbaric bandit group” the Abu Sayyaf, emerged out of “ the almost medieval poverty of Basilan and Sulu,” noted a 2008 Inquirer editorial. “( It waved ) Islamic fundamentalism, wrapped in the mantle of Moro nationalism (and protected in the early years by the veil of collusion with military elements)—a story that goes beyond mere storytelling.”

ASG presents an “enormously complex jigsaw,” asserts “Primed and Purposeful,” a 2010 study of armed groups. To pick one feature of a constantly shifting “Rashomon-like” ASG, smudges “understanding of the total picture” cautions this book, published by Switzerland’s Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies.

Abu Sayyaf’s formal name is a mouthful: Al-Haratakul Islamiyya. Its impact on human insecurity has been disproportionate, given its small numbers, limited weapons and operations cramped within Basilan and Sulu.

The core of poverty feters here. Life expectancy in Sulu—where 72 out of 100 drink from open, polluted wells—is only 56 years, Philippine Human Development Report reveals. That’s almost two decades shorter than those who live in La Union. Functional illiteracy in Basilan is 44 percent. Compare that to 9 percent in Batangas.

Many of ASG’s weapons are pilfered from government arsenals, due to corruption and inadequate supervision. Gun caches are “left on roadsides by… prearrangement with soldiers who bring them on military trucks… Ammunition is obtained easily from cash-strapped soldiers and policemen.”

ASG is considered the main international terrorist threat. Porous borders make possible links with two other groups, namely the Indonesia-based Jema-ah Islamiyah and the local Rajah Solaiman Movement, composed of militant Islamic converts. “This collaboration was highlighted by the Superferry 14 bombing and Valentine’s Day bombing of three cities in 2005.”

Chapter 5 is titled “Abu Sayyaf Reloaded.” Co-authors are Judge Soliman Santos, who specializes in human rights and international law, and Mindanao State University political science professor Octavio Dinampo. “Are ASGs rebels, as they boast, or agents, as critics scoff?” the two ask in this case study. Or are they bandits and terrorists, as widows and orphans of their victims insist?

“It is tempting to adopt a 3-in-I instant coffee formula by coining a ‘rebel-bandit-terrorist’ label,” Santos and Dinampo write. But this group “seems to be one of a kind.” Composed of mainly young Tausugs, Yakans and Sama, in Western Mindnao, ASG is in constant flux.

The bandit aspect dominated the public mind when “Primed and Purposeful” came off the press last year. Memories of the Sipadan and Dos Palmas hostage-for-ransom kidnapping were still raw.

Money was extorted by ransom and “brazen financial charges on foreign journalists for access to guides and interviews with ASG leaders and hostages,” Journalist Maria Ressa recalls. “In the midst of such profiteering, political demands and Islamic talk rang hollow,” Santos and Dinampo add.

Khadaffy Janjanlani, Abu Sabaya, Isnilon Hapilon and two subleaders took five of the Los Palmas hostages as “wives” while in their custody. With Khadaffy’s tolerance, Abu Sabaya did likewise with a teacher hostaged in Basilan. Former henchmen of Sulu politicians hitchhiked with ASG. They’re dubbed namampig-sampig (to “side-slip” or “drift along as events dictate”).

These “postmodern bandits” haggled for ransom in “foreign currency, to be paid in cash or by digital transfer to a numbered bank account,” Inquirer’s Randy David noted. They negotiated while “wearing ski-masks under Ralph Lauren shades.”

The “entrepreneur for violence” template became even more pronounced when, in June 2008, ASG’s leader Radullan Sahiron took hostage Dinampo and TV anchor Ces Orena-Drilon at a pre-arranged interview. “They were released after a P20-million ransom had been paid for Drilon.”

That “bandit” visage, however, could “change with the next sensational bombing or ambush of soldiers,” Santiago and Dinampo warned on the launch of their book. “Then, it will be the terrorist or rebel aspect that will come to the fore in the public imagination.” That came to pass in this month’s Patikul massacre.

What are prospects for the future?

Deaths in battle of leaders like Janjalani and Soliman were big blows. And organizations like Moro Islamic Liberation Front spurn the theft and mutilations. Still, that is unlikely to finish off the group. Neither will “another major campaign of temporary military saturation with palliative or cosmetic civic action.”

Emergence of new faces “could herald yet another setback.” A new and younger generation of leaders is slowly taking over. Among these are Albader Parad and Sulaiman Pattah in Sulu along with Nurhassan Jamiri and Furuji Indama in Basilan

The long range solution hinges on the outcome of the ongoing comprehensive Mindanao peace process talks with the MILF. How the ASG reacts will depend on emerging leaders—“or more precisely on which of them will gain ascendancy.”